Goran Pandev, his country’s most legendary player recently took up a new role within the Football Federation of Macedonia with the sole aim of building for a better future.
By Filip Mishov
Witnessing and closely following Goran Pandev‘s playing career, first as a kid and now as a journalist in Macedonia, is remembering exactly where you were and with whom you have been during the forward’s career highlights, such was the importance of the Macedonian lifting the Champions League‘s trophy with Inter back in 2010 and then leading the national team to EURO 2020.
The Strumica-born forward is our most capped player with 122 appearances. He’s also the top scorer with 38 goals scored and perhaps most importantly, the first-ever captain to take Macedonia to a major tournament. Historic achievements establishing Goran Pandev’s status as the greatest legend in Macedonian football, but sadly, the so-called ‘Bate Pandev’ didn’t really get the farewell that he deserved when retiring from the national team, and it is fair to say that the player and the Federation have endured a rocky relationship over the years, to say the least.
Pandev admits: ‘I never really wanted a testimonial match to honour my career, as the guard of honour that I received from my teammates in my final match for Macedonia at the Johan Cruijff Arena was the best thing that happened to me.” And yet, it still feels odd that the career of the national team’s record-holder was not celebrated in an official manner, as legends like Pandev don’t often emerge from small countries like Macedonia.
Pandav is now finally in a position to make changes and thus, fix some of the issues that irritated him during his playing days – issues such as poor infrastructure, nepotism and mismanagement of the junior age group teams among many others – as the 41-year-old was appointed as the new sports director of the Macedonian national teams back in December last year. Now, six months into the job, the Macedonian legend opens up in an exclusive one-on-one interview for FotMob about the major challenges lying ahead for the federation’s new leadership.
“After many years of proudly wearing the national team’s shirt, I felt honoured to be invited by Masar Omeragić (the newly-elected president) to be part of the new leadership of the Football Federation of Macedonia. I accepted the invitation as I believe that it is necessary to spark changes in order to raise the level of Macedonian football to a much higher level. Honestly, I hope that we will forge the right path in the coming years for the next generation to continue our work, although we know that it will not be an easy task, but we are optimistic. The president, Omeragić is working tirelessly on the challenges that we encounter, but with our knowledge and support, we hope to improve,” begins Pandev.
After leading the Macedonian national team to and at EURO 2020 as captain, Goran Pandev retired from playing international football, while the Football Federation of Macedonia decided against offering a new deal to the then-coach, Igor Angelovski, and instead offered the post to Blagoja Milevski, who had been running the U21s. The record-holding captain did not agree with the federation’s decision at the time and has openly criticized the work of the new coach over recent years. Now, the newly-appointed sports director, Pandev and the coach, Milevski need to work together towards achieving the same goal, but given their past, it was only logical to ask what their relationship is like: “I would describe our relationship as professional. He is the current coach of the national team and the new leadership led by the president, Omeragić gave him their full support. Also, he started the World Cup 2026 Qualifiers well and I hope that he will make us happy and lead us to our maiden World Cup. However, he is the one deciding his own fate, as the results are a mirror of the coach’s work and I wish him good luck.”
Stefan Ristovski succeeded Goran Pandev as the captain following the latter’s retirement in 2021, but the experienced right back decided to stop playing for the Macedonian national team in 2023 due to “a strained relationship between the player and the coach” following the Lynxes’ dreadful 7-0 defeat to England in the EURO 2024 Qualifiers. Since then, the Macedonian public has strongly pushed the case for the 33-year-old to return to the fold, but Pandev does not sound optimistic despite their recent talks: “I got in touch with Stefan back in December last year, immediately after the change of leadership and I spoke with him, and there was also a meeting between the president, Omeragić and him, although I was not present at that meeting. But I told him that I also had similar concerns when I decided to stop playing for the national team back in 2014 (from November 2014 until October 2015), but Stefan has different views as he stopped playing after the appalling loss to England, and it is his decision to not return as long as Milevski is at the helm, and one we should respect by all means. He is an experienced player and a mature person who was both our, and Dinamo Zagreb‘s captain, and I believe that he could still give a lot to the national team as he is continues to play at the highest level. It was our duty to talk to him, but the final decision is his.”
The pool of eligible players to represent the Macedonian national team is modest, to say the least, and over the past couple of decades, a lot of players earned call-ups despite not being regulars at their respective clubs, or even some as free agents at the time, but were still selected to join the national team, which is a rarity in international football. The former forward offers a different perspective and cites the low level of the Macedonian First Football League as one of the reasons: “I was part of the national team for almost two decades and we have had these issues throughout that time. That is nothing new as we always had four or five players who play on a regular basis and the rest of them have been playing sporadically. Any national team’s coach is the happiest when all of his players play regularly and are physically, mentally and tactically ready. Also, it is very tricky, from a player’s perspective, when you are only involved in training and you are not playing matches. But I can assure you that our players who are playing abroad and are only involved in training for their respective clubs are much more ready to play than the ones who are playing regularly in the Macedonian top-tier as the level of our league is sadly, really low.”
However, the strained relationships and the limited pool of players for the senior national team are not Goran Pandev’s biggest concern, as the issues in Macedonian football run much deeper, and the poor management of the youth categories over the past few years is taking its toll, something I have been reporting on for years as well. One of the first decisions taken by the federation’s new leadership was replacing most of the coaches within the youth categories (U21, U19, U17, U16, U15) as Macedonia have failed to qualify for a major youth tournament since the U21 Euros back in 2017, when Blagoja Milevski was at the helm of the U21s.
“The biggest concerns are related to the youth categories because if we are mismanaging the youth, we simply cannot expect to have a quality senior side. Changing the coaches within the youth categories is a good starting point, as we have a different vision, and Georgi Hristov is the one in charge as he has broad experience in the field. Honestly, I am not too familiar with the youth categories as I have been playing abroad in the past 25 years and only now, I am getting to know more about them. The most important thing is that we have appointed professional coaches who will give chances to the talented players who truly deserve to wear the national team’s shirt and that is our main goal. We are a small country, and we do not have 100 talented players to choose from, but nowadays we have youth categories starting from U15 upwards and back in my time that was not the case. They have training camps every month and with hard work, we can develop players who will be ready to play for the seniors in the future. As I said, it will not be easy and it will take time as the mismanagement has been going on for years and that is shown by the poor results, but we need quality coaches as well, because the talent is definitely there and we hope that we can make the future better.”
The Macedonian diaspora (estimates around +700.000) is increasing as more and more people are deciding to move abroad due to various geopolitical and economic reasons among many others, and subsequently, there are a lot of young footballers around the globe who are eligible to represent the Macedonian national team. For example, one of them was Tottenham Hotspur‘s Dejan Kulusevski who opted to play for Sweden instead of Macedonia and when asked whether the federation is doing enough to expand the players’ pool with these type of players, Pandev says: “I disagree that we are not doing enough for them to play for our national team, I would rather say that most of them do not have a desire to play for Macedonia. One of the first things that we did as a new leadership was get in touch with over 50 young and talented players who are eligible to play for Macedonia, and I was the one who personally got in touch with most of them, only to realise that a lot of them are simply not interested in playing for our national team and that is a dealbreaker for me. You should feel proud when you are called upon to play for Macedonia and if you do not have that desire, what is even the point. I had very difficult and long seasons when playing in Serie A and I had to change flights up to four times just to get back to Macedonia to play for the national team. But it was a huge honour of mine to wear the national team’s shirt, nowadays, we have this problem and additionally, we have parents, children, agents who are getting involved in their decision-making process too.”
Macedonia’s sole appearance at a major tournament came, as mentioned, back in 2021 with Pandev leading the national team at EURO 2020, an achievement which Pandev describes as “the most important one in his career and a childhood dream come true”, but how long will the national team wait for the next major tournament? “Let us be honest, we all want Macedonia to be part of every European and World Championship, but let us take Italy as an example. They did not qualify for the last two World Cups and Serie A is one of the best European leagues. If you look at our squad and the issues we are facing, it is not that simple, although you and I will be the happiest men on Earth if we always played in major tournaments. But we have to be honest with ourselves, we simply do not have the quality to play regularly at major finals at this moment.”
The Blagoja Milevski-led squad have a match against Belgium on 6 June at the Toshe Proeski national arena in Skopje and three days later, face a trip to Kazakhstan as part of the 2026 World Cup Qualifiers. The Lynxes have started the qualifiers with a promising win in Liechtenstein and a home draw with Wales.
“I believe in achieving positive results, but at the same time, I think these next couple of matches will be the most difficult ones given that they come at the end of the season. Although that applies more for Belgium than for us because they obviously have more world-class players in the top leagues around Europe. They are the favourites, no doubt about it, but I believe in our squad, and we showed both against Liechtenstein and Wales that we possess quality. With the help from our supporters, we can compete against Belgium and I hope that the stadium will be full to support the boys.”
Last but definitely not least, history has taught the Macedonian nation that many have spoken and only a few have delivered, and it is difficult to be optimistic about the future given all the unfulfilled promises over the years, but as Goran Pandev brought rays of hope during the national team’s darkest days, now his influential presence within the Football Federation of Macedonia is doing the same, and only time will tell whether things can and will get better.
“For me the role (sports director) is not important, we should act and be like a family and work towards achieving the same goal. And that goal is to raise Macedonian football to a higher level and improve the infrastructure, which is crucial too. But I think that with people like Georgi Hristov, Agim Ibraimi and Ilija Najdoski all led by Masar Omeragić who does not have any sentimentality towards anyone, we can change things for the better. I am excited to be here, because I am optimistic, but we all must work professionally in the same direction and believe in ourselves. It is very hard to do this and it was much easier to play, believe me. Our mentality is a negative one by nature and regardless of what you do, there will always be critics. But we are hoping to bring life to Macedonian football for the new generations and for a better future. Trying to spark change in Macedonia is very hard and we will need time.”
(Images from IMAGO and courtesy of the Football Federation of Macedonia)
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